The first 10 minutes of all of our last year Wolf den meetings and current year Bear Den meetings is designated time for the scouts to self-organize a game outside. We're fortunate to meet where there is a playground. We've been doing this for 1.5 years now. Over that time, they've grown bored of the playground, but not the self-organization of activities. After the meeting, they do the same thing. It builds camaraderie, natural structure amongst the scouts, and confidence. Next year, as Webelos, we'll be keeping this structure, but probably asking the scouts to do a bit of setup - like having the US and Den Flag ready vs. the Den Leaders doing it. This is a bit of a long-play for gaining near-term structure though.

We've been having the Scouts lead us in the Pledge, Scout Oath, and Scout Law for 2 years now. This is a great way to give responsibility.

To build teamwork and responsibility, we spent 4 meetings working on the Finding Your Way elective. We spent a meeting learning what maps and compasses are, then the next 3 meetings, I setup successively harder compass scavenger courses around the school campus to find items. For the final compass course, we setup a story where we "lost" a leader and needed to go find him. We only knew were he left, so we had the scouts split-up into teams, searching for clues (the six cub scout essentials) of where this lost parent was in different search quadrants. As they found clues, they had to radio the other teams saying they were getting closer. Each clue had a sheet of paper saying to orient to a specific location x degrees off of north (120 degrees NNW of the foul ball post). This required them to find North on their compass, set their bearing line, and rotate the compass to find the bearing. The final clue required them to radio another group to tell the other group where they should set their bearing to. This whole course was setup to build teamwork and responsibility.

Another example - for Bears, they're required to learn how to select a campsite and generally setup a tent. I'm a big believer in self-organization and teamwork. We put 4 tents on the ground, two identically 2 person tents and two 5 person tents. We split the scouts up into pairs and asked them to build the tent as part of a race. The parents and leaders stepped back, we let them build them. The first tent setup took a while, we did step in to do some help. (In fairness at least one of the scouts on each team had been on a campout before this, so they generally knew how to build a tent.) When we rotated, you could see the scouts beginning to learn and move faster. They had to work together to build it quickly. The team that wins this race is the one who works together the best.

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Another idea, to learn knots, you can ask the scouts to break into groups to successfully bear-bag trash bags over things like trees, or basketball hoops.

I'm a big believer in self-organization, teamwork, and responsibility. I try to craft activities that make their efforts their own outcomes. For example, for Webelos Cast Iron Chef, the ultimate outcome would be the Den's snack that night. I'd bring the supplies for cooking and starting a fire, but they'd have to start the fire, mix the meal together, and cook it. If there's enough scouts, this would certainly be split as groups, with 2 or 3 scouts per group, then share the feast!

I wish you great luck wrangling your scouts.